Wellbeing

Iskra Lawrence: ‘Boys queued up to thank me for teaching them about body confidence’

Tackling body image anxiety among young people is becoming increasingly challenging in a world where the medium they use the most – social media – bombards them with airbrushed images.

In January a campaign to promote health above appearance among young people published research on body image anxiety after speaking to 2,000 British pupils aged between 11 and 16.

More than half of pupils (52 per cent) told the Be Real Campaign they worried regularly about their appearance. Thirty-six per cent said they were willing to do “whatever it takes to look good” and one in 10 would consider having plastic surgery. Thirty per cent would isolate themselves because of their concerns about the way they looked.

‘My followers open Instagram on average 21 times a day’

Be Real’s research also highlighted that three-quarters of young people who learned about body confidence as part of their curriculum said it made them feel more positive about themselves. Yet less than half (48 per cent) said they had learned about body confidence in the classroom.

What is self-care?

Iskra Lawrence, a model and body positivity campaigner, is trying to challenge the homogenous portrayals of beauty churned out online after overcoming body confidence issues of her own. The 26-year-old from Kidderminster is calling on British schools to add ‘self-care’ classes to their curriculum. These classes would advocate an all-encompassing approach to well-being which focuses on mental, physical and emotional health.

Lawrence launched a campaign to promote self-care in the UK in May with the help of the BBC, who facilitated her in hosting 30-minute self-care classes in three schools in Worcester. What self-care is and how to practise it was also the subject of the Ted Talk Lawrence delivered this month at the University of Nevada.

Lawrence told i: “It’s looking after yourself and the relationship you have with yourself and your body.

‘Boys were saying ‘I’ve never ever been talked to about these kinds of topics and subjects’

“Self-care is a journey. It’s something that you do daily, it’s finding your own rituals. It’s doing things that make you happy, it’s about meditation, it’s about giving yourself body positive challenges.

The mirror challenge

“I have one [technique] that I talked about in my Ted Talk called the mirror challenge. It’s basically changing the discussion you have with yourself. Usually, when we look in the mirror we immediately pick out insecurities and when you start doing self-care you have to practise looking in the mirror and picking out things you love about your body, your personality, your talent.”

Lawrence was signed to a modelling agency at 13, then advised her hips were too ‘big’ and subsequently dropped at the age of 15. She would spend the next six years obsessively dieting and exercising in an attempt to fit the beauty ideal promoted by the industry. A UK size 14, she found herself trapped in the ultimate paradox: too big for so-called straight-size modelling and two small for plus-size.

Her dogged attempts at carving out a space for herself began by cold-calling companies and agencies to offer herself as a model. These attempts were ultimately successful and she was signed with Models 1 in the UK before becoming the face of a seminal anti-airbrushing campaign by the lingerie brand Aerie. All of the models in Aerie’s adverts are unretouched and the brand uses ambassadors such as Lawrence to talk about beauty coming in more than one size. But the body positivity movement is overwhelmingly female-centric, and Lawrence says the self-care classes she led allowed her to talk to boys for the first time too.

“They were 11 to 14 year-olds and I wasn’t sure if they would be interested or just think ‘what is she on about?’” she says.

However, a number of children approached her afterwards. “I was looking into everybody’s eyes and they were taking it in. I asked if anyone wanted to talk to me privately and there was a queue, with boys as well. Boys were saying ‘I’ve never ever been talked to about these kinds of topics and subjects and it just really helped me feel better about myself.”

Lawrence also used self-care to persuade three women struggling with low self-confidence to walk around London wearing nothing but bikinis live on This Morning. Her technique was evidently successful – two of the women who began the show in tears then refused to put their robes back on for the walk back to the studio.

When Lawrence was denied a career in modelling she used social media as a vehicle to be seen. But while Instagram, Facebook and other networks are her platforms, she is keen for young people to start using social media differently.

‘Social media is very intrusive in our lives’

Be Real’s report found the pressures felt by young people about their appearance can be both “prolific and all-encompassing” as they are constantly connected to their peers through online platforms. Body image anxiety is compounded by social media; the majority of young people named it as a source of pressure and a facilitator of body image anxiety.

“Social media is very intrusive in our lives and we’re not taught how to cope with it,” says Lawrence. “The hours that we spend online a day – it’s crazy. I recently got to go to Instagram and find out some of my statistics and my followers open Instagram on average 21 times a day. They are constantly on it, constantly consuming images and messages.”

Young people must be taught about how endemic retouching is in the images disseminated via social media, says Lawrence. Then they should also be shown what to do if they receive online abuse.

“Learning how to block, report, delete, but also educating them on what to do when they are on someone’s profile and they are going through it and going into that black hole, looking at these beautiful pictures of someone with the ‘perfect’ relationship, the ‘perfect’ flawless selfie, and they think: ‘Oh my gosh I want that life, my life sucks, I feel awful’. They need to know: remove yourself from that and go on accounts that inspire you and make you feel good.”

Be Real has launched a Body Confidence Campaign Toolkit for Schools which is available to download here.

iNews

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